Rajpal's Column

A Mills and Boon kind of agenda

Weary of sun, shopping and sightseeing,
tens of thousands of Americans are venturing abroad as "reality tourists.''
Instead of that pastry making jaunt to Provence, for $ 1665, including
room, board and air fare US travellers can spend a week in Guatemala to
"learn about the history of repression and political violence.''

If scuba diving in Hawaii doesn't appeal, for $ 3,299 plus airfare "Americans
can travel to South Asia to meet with landmine victims and learn how the
secret CIA war on Laos affected the people.''

That paragraph was an excerpt from an international news magazine, touting
"reality tourism'' to the world's political hot spots, which "offers a
respite from the usual mundane vacation.''

Renton de Alwis will soon be advertising: "Come see Sri Lanka's bombed
out A 30 airbuses." "Come see two of the world's most recalcitrant political
prize fighters (named Chandrika and Ranil) lock horns.'' "Come see one
of the world's oldest countries disintegrate before your eyes.''

If reality tourism is brought to Sri Lanka, the country's mania for
self-destruction would have reached it's logical conclusion. But more importantly,
the country would perceive it's own almost unseen contradictions far better.

This is a country in which even its most important Marxist party doesn't
want to discuss matters such as the economy in any kind of respectable
detail.

CNN announced repeatedly this week that Sri Lanka's beleaguered minority
government is making a desperate
attempt to ally with one of the country's Marxist parties, in order to
"stay in power.''

But this Marxist party advocates protectionism and is justifiably wary
of the World Bank and the IMF. But it does not say in any coherent way
how it proposes to manage an economy sans the necessary evil of the customary
IMF bailout?

But, that seems all very normal for a country which is almost romantically
involved with the concept of a "political consensus'' but has not even
though of anything like an "economic consensus.''

It's the ultimate top down theory. Solve the political problems at the
top, and the economy and other problems will sort themselves out.

The performance of the Marxists in this sphere of setting out an agenda
for an economy confirms a certain suspicion that Sri Lanka is fast becoming
a country that refuses to think.

Take this excerpt from a recent news-magazine: 'Mr Gayoom ( of the Maldives)
is determined to make tourism a sustainable, long-term source of income
for his country. And nowhere else in the Subcontinent, perhaps with the
exception of Bhutan, is tourism practiced as carefully as it is in the
Maldives. The country has made sure it gets the maximum monetary benefit
from tourism while minimizing its social and environmental impact. The
only Maldivian that a visiting tourist comes in direct contact with could
be the Immigration Officer at the airport.

At the end of their holiday, tourists are encouraged to take all waste
paper, plastics and other rubbish back to their home country. Much of the
cargo container of a departing LTU charter flight last month was taken
up by white plastic bags bulging with tourist trash.''

Compare and contrast that with our economic somnambulence. Already,
the Maldivians are keen to position themselves regionally as South-South
Asians ( as opposed to South Asians) and model themselves after the ASEAN
economies.

Though all that is not to say that Sri Lanka should model itself after
Mahathir-land, or Lee Kwan Yew land, it is to suggest that Sri Lanka is
on a loser's trail, even speaking regionally.

The war is problem number one, but, the current thinking that the war
should be snuffed out before the country thinks of the economy, is quite
like the thinking that the baby can be lulled to sleep - after it is thrown
out with the bathwater into the nearest ditch.

The JVP, the government's tentative "Marxist ally'' for instance, wants
protectionism and an "internal economy'' and wants no negotiations whatsoever
with the LTTE.

How is the war going to be prosecuted when the nation goes bankrupt,
and the IMF doesn't give the customary bailout? Weerawansa will dream on
about that, until both the Maldives and Bangladesh become newly-industrialized
developed nations.

The economic consensus deludes most of all the nation's intelligentsia
and its activists and civil society groups too, which, keen observers of
social phenomena would say are "romantically involved with the idea of
a consensus on war.'' It's romantic pacifism as opposed to hard headed
pacifism; a pacifism big on ideas but badly blurred in its focus.